The Best Thing about Starfield... (PC Review)

Starfield is a vast multifaceted complex game that I put nearly 100 hours into without feeling like I was short on things to do it has a lot to offer a hard sci-fi Universe built from the ground up with its own history and Aesthetics competent firstperson shooting a decent degree of player expression but each of those traits comes with a caveat although its World building is a good platform for some pretty engaging missions its heavy-handed allegories and superficial characters mean the narratives often fall flat although the shooting feels good the combat's various systems aren't integrated into a cohesive hole that makes it compelling by itself and although there is some player choice there isn't room for vastly different builds or Mission outcomes to reflect across starfields Universe still these individual systems don't need to be the absolute best on their own because when they come together whenever I played through a mission that moved seamlessly from dialogue mechanics to combat to exploration these different aspects of the game complemented each other and made for a special experience that's more than the sum of its parts I'll be honest most of the time I didn't enjoy the quality of writing in Starfield the characters were universally Bland its allegories heavy-handed it philosophies thin with nothing profound to say and the plots themselves straightforward with little in the way of twists and turns if this were any other medium I wouldn't have made it to the end as it were starfields plots do one thing passively well role playing the game puts you in a variety of exciting situations makes your admittedly few choices matter and offers just enough complexity to make you believe that you're participating in important events would the missions have benefited from better writing of course but I can't deny that my favorite moments playing this game were when I suspended my disbelief and committed to the plot despite its faults the writing brought just enough to the table to make for a genuinely fun roleplaying experience I'll start with the main story in character creation I chose to be a pilgrim although that seemed only to determine my starting skills rather than substantially impact the narrative regardless you play as a minor who stumbles upon an artifact a mysterious fragment of Unknown Origin and material that gives you a cosmic Vision thereafter you join constellation a group of volunteer explorers dedicating their lives to to uncovering the secrets of the universe you learn the artifacts are part of a set and in order to uncover the mystery constellation makes it your job to find the remaining pieces the premise is functional enough and I was interested in where the plot would go considering it's very Fantastical compared to the relative realism of the rest of the game there are some legitimately cool moments and set pieces throughout the main story from the reveal of your adversaries the starborn to some of the fights with them which offer rare moments of real tension that I didn't experience very often moments that made me emotionally invested where I really felt the stake it's hard to talk about the good stuff without getting into spoilers but I can say that I enjoyed the mystery as it was built up I liked these mysterious opponents with strange abilities that defied my understanding of this universe's rules even though the characters weren't all that compelling I'll admit I grew somewhat attached to a select few of my companions namely Sam Co and Andreia each of whom opened up to me about their pasts and inner turmoils adding a level of emotional depth to the story I liked the set pieces from the chase across new atlantis's well District to the final boss fight which I won't spoil but was an impressive Rive spectacle in isolation these moments were fun to play through and the Mystery kept me guessing unfortunately that was only the case in isolation surrounding these impressive moments were generally boring characters with little to contribute in terms of plot advancement or emotional investment most of the story related missions were uninteresting usually involving Gathering more artifacts from generic locations or gaining more Powers the latter took place at visually impressive temples that were nonetheless tedious to complete with a pointless miname since the only thing I had to do was float around in Zerg reaching these flashing points in the room before they'd fizzle out and disappear as I'll detail later most of the powers weren't useful anyway collecting artifacts was necessary in order to continue the story and occasionally getting them would involve a cool level to play through like when I had to steal one from a treasure collector and could choose between a few methods of accomplishing the job most of the time though I got them from generic dungeon type locations by fighting generic enemies the big reveal was also disappointing with character motivations that the game didn't do enough to convey and plot points that it didn't push far enough the story ends up fizzling out depending too much on telling you its themes rather than showing them ultimately making me feel like nothing happened the journey was easily the most interesting part since the highlights of the game were very much isolated role playing sequences without the gratifying finale I'd hoped for the faction missions were the best parts of the game because they were more consistent in quality than the main story they didn't necessarily have better characters or more surprising narratives but they allowed you to role playay in shorter denser missions the game draws from a myriad of sub genres the rugen industries mission is about corporate Espionage the fre star Rangers Mission makes you a detective in a western the UC sf/ Crimson Fleet mission is an undercover cop story and the UC Vanguard Mission puts you at the front lines in an alien invasion each of these offers a degree of choice in much denser narratives that kept me hooked from beginning to end take the reen industry's Mission as an example which leans into social stealth and non-lethal mechanics offering ways to manipulate the environments to make it easier to complete objectives it also had a subplot involving a dangerous technology which I could try to dissuade the board members from continuing to develop the focus of the faction missions was great and as good as the highlights of the main story were I was generally more excited about going out of my way to find factions because I knew they'd be more consistent on the other hand shorter missions were more of a mixed bag there were some genuinely cool ones like one where I fought my way through the layer of a former vigilante to take up their mantle or another where I found an isolated settlement of people under the rule of robots completely disconnected from the rest of civilization and with no clear answers as to how they were in the situation and who put them there but there's also a lot of filler some Miss are very short and formulaic involving talking to someone and either persuading them to do something or fighting them if they refuse these types contribute little more than a bit of World building a good example involved The Trackers Alliance an organization of bounty hunters I spoke to a member who asked me to install a tracking device away from Sedonia the city we were in I ran all the way there installed the device ran back got my reward and the mission ended no twists no fights nothing unexpected I did exactly as I was asked to do and that was it leaving me wondering why it was included at all the best of these shorter moments imitate the role playing of faction missions be it with their freedom of choice set pieces or engaging narratives the ones that don't seem to be here just to Pat out the game fortunately though starfields art design is great it features a wide range of Aesthetics grounded in hard sci-fi the ships for instance showcase retrofuturistic designs that lean towards realism rather than flashiness a direction that the game supports with its flexible ship building feature there are several factions within the world of Starfield each with its own distinct style and color palette you can see these Aesthetics everywhere from the environments to the costumes I particularly liked the look of rujan Industries with its bold contrasting pette of white red and black and the sharp angular geometry of the costumes but that's just one example Starfield borrows from sci-fi and Beyond with neon being akin to gritty cyberpunk and Aila City being a western town the missions that take place there reflect that with a freest star Ranger mission in Aila City turning you into an officer of the law for example showing that these Aesthetics aren't superficial but rather that they're built into the game's narratives as well if you followed to the Starfield discourse at all you'll probably know that a point of contention is a state of exploration in this game there is no wandering around an enormous singular open world map en chancing upon unexpected activities instead Starfield is made up of a huge number of isolated Maps welded together by fast travel and loading screens it still functions like an open world with missions that can take the player from planet to planet rather than staying in a single location but there is no in between where players can discover things outside of the Rails of a narrative oriented Mission additionally since the world is made up of separate spaces that load individually the frequent loading screens inevitably break immersion still I don't think those design choices are without benefits so I'll tell you what I think are the pros and cons it's true that you can't fly between planets or even from orbit to a planet's surface no matter how long it might have taken to make that trip though it would have clashed with the realism of starfields hard sci-fi aesthetic admittedly Starfield isn't the most realistic game out there but it's grounded compared to other space games like outer Wilds or no man Sky regardless I can't deny the game sense of scale since flying at full speed for long periods of time doesn't get you closer to any celestial bodies making everything I saw saw feel enormous and Incredibly distant it makes me wonder how much of the immersion problem would have been solved if things had been tweaked just slightly for instance if there was no black loading screen between the grab jump animations or if the map was in World rather than just UI for the player just little things to improve immersion and avoid the constant jarring cuts to Black loading screens it wouldn't take care of the in between problem but it would improve immersion I'm not saying these would be easy fixes particularly removing loading screens but I wonder if these seemingly little changes could have improved the narrative around Starfield fls notwithstanding I thought it was appropriate for this kind of game to use travel animations to preserve its sense of scale even if it seems counterintuitive to prioritize one aspect of immersion over another more obvious one one more benefit is the improved technical performance of individual locations Aila City performed the worst for me but whenever I entered a building the frame rate would jump up presumably because the game needed to load much fewer objects and activities it's easy to say that the game should have been optimized to perform well regardless of the environment and I'm not so naive as to think this is the best possible version of the game that could exist but I tend to cut Game Dev some slack I don't believe for one second that this sort of decision is made lightly as annoying as the loading screens were at least I got the Practical benefit of higher frame rates in less intensive areas since there is no in between the game does the work of bringing the content to the player by automatically adding activities of interest to a dedicated list in the menu as you hear about them in candid conversations from NPCs for example I'd hear an NPC say something like I heard X need some help but I've been too busy and I'd get a prompt that says go talk to X so i' do that and it' turn into a full-fledged Mission given how big the cumulative map is this design Choice makes sense if missions were scattered all over the dozens and dozens of planets the game would feel more traditionally open world sure but the content would be spread much thinner and you'd have to go to random planets for the chance at finding a mission or two that design works for games like Skyrim that have in between space for content to wait to be discovered but even without the INB between Starfield is so big that the ratio of content to space would be way off making it tedious to find stuff to do and it's not like there's a shortage of content rather there's so much space for things like Outpost building that instead of making you look for it the game gives you missions in places it knows you'll often visit this doesn't fix the issue some might have with the open world design but it makes everything surrounding it fit the flip side of that is without narratives tied to most planets they felt less mysterious and Uncharted to me and more like an assortment of assets haphazardly assembled to create some semblance of a natural environment in these settings the illusion of realism just didn't hold up for me starfields design choices have a Cascade effect the game needs to feel huge so it can't all be loaded at once which necessitates loading screens only so much space to reasonably content and not as much of the in between that allows for exploration since most of the space I traversed I.E unsettled planets aren't there to facilitate narrative oriented exploration a lot of Starfield ends up feeling empty I personally didn't have a big issue with starfields exploration I'm the type of player who enjoys a narrative experience most in a game like this I wanted objectives and characters and a storyline to follow I didn't mind that missions came to me still that points to a deeper problem namely that the game wasn't interesting to me outside of quests I don't think this is the same as the lack of an in between que having that wouldn't have been a solution rather the game's various systems didn't hold up for me on their own requiring all aspects of the game to support each other for me to enjoy them that being the case it was nice to always have a list of potential objectives whenever I ran out of stuff to do despite offering a plethora of combat abilities alongside its competent first-person shooting the game fails to integrate them in a meaningful way leaving combat feeling disjointed in vanilla the shooting itself forms a solid foundation the animations sounds and weapon types lend the visceral feeling that makes for a good shooter other mechanics surround that framework the powers you accumulate as you progress through the campaign social abilities that compel enemies to behave in certain ways and stealth mechanics that Grant some flexibility towards how I approached combat all of these systems might give the impression of an impressive combat model but in practice none of it came together for me rather than giving me an edge in the fight most of the options slowed me down making the best approach most of the time the simplest one equipping my most powerful weapon and moving aggressively towards enemies taking cover when necessary and maybe throwing in a superpower or a grenade once in a while for good measure if that sounds familiar it's because nothing makes the combat essentially different from any other shooter they're inlies my issue with this aspect of the game it gave me a lot to choose from but most of it seemed so unviable from the outset that I'd revert to its more traditional Elements which although fundamentally competent were unfortunately very plain that said I like what Bethesda did here to up the quality of combat compared to previous titles to begin with a lot of people myself included were pleasantly surprised to find a decent variety of weapons ail aailable all of which have their own distinct feel owing to their sense of weight their Snappy satisfying reload animations and their abrasive sound effects the game covers all its bases with a range of weapons you might expect from snipers to assault rifles to shotguns as well as relatively non-traditional weapons like the non-lethal EM rifle the variety offered me some freedom in how I dealt with various scenarios you can judge a weapon based on several traits including range fire rate and damage you can upgrade these traits with weapon mods and even add some cool abilities and although I have issues with the research in mod systems that I'll get into later some of those abilities were admittedly pretty cool for instance I had a shotgun that had a chance of applying a radiation status effect as well as a piece of armor that sometimes set nearby enemies on fire the possibility forms a solid foundation for the rest of combat the momentto moment experience was similarly promising early on the gameplay Loop felt good running towards nearby enemies gunning them down with a shotgun launching myself into the air with my Boost pack switching to an assault rifle and taking down more enemies in the middle distance it's fast it's impactful and at least in the beginning it was pretty fun although enemies lacked variety and their AI was far from the best there were many times they'd surprise me with how unpredictable they could be for instance they would take and hold cover to draw me out move around to get behind me or rush me in an effort to overwhelm Me by sheer numbers a simple but engaging set of Behavioral guidelines that level of behavior wasn't consistent though as often times they do little to protect themselves from my assault or even just stand still without noticing my presence at all that's where the combat started to break down for me as capable as its foundation is it's by no means revolutionary and without interesting enemy types and behaviors is to have depth it got stale fast even though throwables felt good to use they were my first indication that I wouldn't be rewarded for experimentation I really liked the cry mine which I found useful whenever I needed to slow down enemies and give myself more time to deal damage without taking any myself unfortunately those occasions were really limited because laying down Minds presumes that enemies will move through a predicted path let's say I wanted to wait for an enemy to come to me there's only one way they could do that so I place a mind in their way that's all well and good until I realize that enemies don't behave in a way that enables strategy in practice I just end up waiting for nothing as they kept their distance then I'd lose my patience run at them and take them out with my shotgun the cryo mine exemplifies combat's broader problem as many systems as it offered me as many routes it encouraged me to try out in combat whether that be stealth non-lethal weapons powers or something as simple as choosing between weapons I rarely felt rewarded for experimenting I spent most of my 90 plus hour playthrough with a shotgun gun because I found that to be the most efficient way to take on enemies anytime I'd try something else an assault rifle a Minigun a sniper even unique Legendary Weapons they'd only slow down the rate at which enemies would go down and in turn make me more vulnerable to taking damage myself the game showcases an impressive variety of weapon types and mods but when it comes down to it I found most of them unviable which points to balancing issues that undermine the game's options and in my case discouraged player choice the same holds true for the superpowers out of the 15 or so that I accumulated only two were useful enough to use regularly mostly I used the anti-gravity field an ability that temporarily incapacitated enemies in a small area in front of me by removing their gravity which was useful anytime I felt overwhelmed I also liked a shield ability that protected me from attacks in the direction I faced and deflected some back occasionally I try out a few others but none had the potential to substantially change my play style there was one that knocked nearby enemies backward but it didn't incapacitate them as effectively as the anti-gravity field another fired a solar beam but it didn't do enough damage to Warrant using it over my shotgun gun there was also one that gave me a forward midair boost and although that could have given me more control its usefulness was limited by being chained to the power gauge since I wanted to be able to use my shield and anti-gravity field if need be there were several other powers some that were geared towards resource extraction others that were somewhat useful in social situations but for one reason or another none that seemed worth incorporating into my play style they didn't seem well integrated there was little to no Synergy with the game's other systems like with a gravity wave and solar Beam for instance which were just lesser methods of offense I had a lot of options but most seem disruptive to my rhythm of gameplay it's important to be aware going into Starfield that while certain skill sets like stealth and social abilities broaden the player's options they aren't so much alternatives to combat as they are supplemental to it occasionally there might be a mission that requires stealth but those are designed to accommodate it most of the time the most efficient method is to run into a room guns blazing the cases I was incentivized to use stealth were few and far between so although you might Crouch once in a while to steal something this is definitely not a fleshed out stealth game and those mechanics seem meant to supplement the traditional FPS elements rather than replace them entirely would it be possible for someone to stealth their way through the game maybe but that would be a role playing challenge the player would be placing on themselves since the game just doesn't seem designed to demand or even encourage it considering how much I enjoyed the stealth missions I wish more of the game was open to different approaches in contrast diplomacy seemed built into missions more naturally which is an instance of the game systems coming together and truly complimenting combat it's possible for the player to talk their way through situations with persuasion negotiation or intimidation and occasionally I had the opportunity to completely sidestep combat Starfield is still a first person shooter first so anytime it sprung Combat on me I had no choice but to engage with those traditional FPS elements even so I can't expect for the game to believably give me a way out of every fight so I like the extent to which these social mechanics were available that being said starfields combat ultimately feels disjointed rather than the cohesive playground for experimentation that it seems to be aiming for instead of feeling empowered by The Game's many options I was slowed down and frustrated whenever I tried to take advantage of them it didn't take long for me to become comfortable with the shotgun the two afor mentioned powers and a couple of throwables as the only things I'd use in any given scenario the other options were either weaker or fit awkwardly within my play style without synergizing with combat's other elements ship combat is relatively straightforward you only have so much power to allocate to various systems everything you can do with the ship from combat to space travel revolves around that meaning you have to be conscious about how much power you want where regardless of what you're doing keeping in mind that the more power you dedicate to Any Given system the more effective it'll be it's a game of compromise that adds a degree of consideration I enjoyed I also had to be conscious of what weapon types I used since the shields that protect enemy vessels take more damage from certain weapons like lasers you have the option to Target specific ship parts allowing you to take out their engine and board the ship in order to kill enemies as a first-person shooter or simply take out the ship's guns so they can't deal damage while you finish them off even though the power system is simple by itself it facilitates all of these other layers that turn what could otherwise be turn off your brain combat into a deeper and more considered experience that still manages to be fast-paced and fun there were a few systems I didn't engage very deeply in my playthrough the first is The Outpost building which while I can't and I seemed elaborate and fairly flexible didn't incentivize me to actually use it I tried multiple times but most of the effort that I put into outposts went towards the outposts themselves rather than what the game pronounced them to before which is to industrialize material extraction to make it easier to upgrade and customize your equipment my problem is that rather than seeing those Investments pay off within a reasonable time frame I came across several roadblocks before beforehand first I'd need materials to build the outposts which are not fun to collect then I'd need materials to do research which would make more mods accessible but most of the mods require highle research to be done first which wouldn't be accessible without using skill points to dedicate to research but even that research was specific to the equipment type meaning weapon research upgrades were separate from space suit and chemical research upgrades and since you don't gain skill points quickly I'd go off to do missions to gain XP to dedicate to those upgrades before forgetting about the whole thing then eventually have the Epiphany that I don't have any trouble with combat anyway so why would I put so much effort into upgrading my equipment in the first place intrinsically motivated players might find it more enjoyable to engage with the Outpost system for the sake of it but I wanted to see tangible results and I found the reward immensely disproportionate to how much time and effort the game seemed to expect I also found surveying to be the least interesting part of the game involving little more than pressing the a button to scan several flora and fauna whose only purpose seemed to be a material extraction as opposed to any degree of intriguing biological characteristics that would make for a compelling setting the core of these mechanics was frankly boring to me and not worth putting time into especially considering that the game made powerful equipment available to loot and to buy I also didn't engage in ship building I didn't think anything was fundamentally wrong with it but I'm an extrinsically motivated player and since I didn't have much trouble in ship fights I didn't have a reason to explore that aspect of the game considering some of the ships people have built and shared online it seems reasonably flexible and open to player expression but that isn't something I'm interested in just for the sake of it I did go so far as to recolor my ships and upgrade some weapons and other specific Parts but but I never fundamentally rearranged anything or built a ship from the ground up I appreciate that it's possible but it's just not for me I played Starfield on high settings at 1440p on a laptop running an AMD 6800 M which got me inconsistent but acceptable performance the low points were big areas with a lot of activity particularly Aila City with my PC struggling to hit even 30 frames per second smaller environments approached 60 frames per second which was fortunate because most combat took place indoors as much as it sucks to constantly get loading screens I appreciate that I got good performance where it counted most as an example neon is pretty choppy which could make fights that much more difficult but since loading into a warehouse drastically improves the frame rate I had a better handle on the fast-paced combat that might ensue I also experienced solid performance flying in orbit which again is probably because the space is loaded in isolation with relatively little geometry to weigh things down other environments landed somewhere in the middle the wide open planes of random planets are relatively empty despite being so vast meaning that they maintain a solid frame rate despite being bigger than any City although there were some annoyingly taxing areas the overwhelming majority of the game met my personal standards and didn't Mar the experience of actually playing the game for me I don't demand the most cuttingedge Graphics in new games even in AAA games but Starfield is weirdly inconsistent at its best it's comparable to last gen Graphics indoor environments in particular looked great since the lighting could do some heavy lifting to elevate simple textures laid out over broad spaces without getting into spoilers a story mission that took place on an Earth desert looked absolutely gorgeous because all visual elements were playing really well together the lighting the monochromatic environmental design the contrasting character designs it was an impressive striking scene that stayed with me throughout the rest of my playthrough if the whole game looked like that I'd be more than happy however the graphics start to fall apart anywhere there are a lot of fine details like in outdoor areas with foliage the level of detail in those 3D models needs support from other visual systems like lighting to look decent these spaces often don't get that boost they need resulting in visually jumbled environments that don't flatter the individual models frankly some cities looked ugly which surprised me given how much time you spend in them for instance new Atlantis despite its bright color palette looks strangely flat its environments lack the detail I saw in other parts of the game and the lighting fails to bring any sense of dynamics that might make up for its shortcomings Aila City had a similar issue I didn't mind its dreary color palette but again the lighting didn't do enough to support the textures I only point out these examples because other points in the game prove that Starfield is capable of looking great when all of these elements come together and it's disappointing that some of the places I spent the most time at are so unappealing I came across only a few bugs in my 90 Plus hours of playtime most of which were harmless the first was a recurring issue that involved my companion standing way too close to me sometimes letting me see the inside of their character model although that stopped happening entirely with the first update the more common issue was the opposite my companion would lag way behind me which I'm not sure was actually a bug or just strange behavioral guidelines though it was funny to see them running to catch up with me from so far away on various occasions companions would also stop wherever they were anytime I started a conversation even if they weren't anywhere near me And since they'd occasionally interject with their own dialogue the game would show them standing in a completely different location speaking as though they were just a few feet away far from gamebreaking but a little odd all the same there was an annoying bug that happened a few times where dark monochromatic geometry obscured my vision but that would only last about 5 seconds before resolving itself the worst bugs involved two instances in which I couldn't progress a side mission one involved the upside strikker gang in which I ran an errand for them before returning only to find them locked behind an inaccessible door there was another mission that seemed very close to being done but was interrupted when nearly every MPC in the area suddenly and inexplicably started attacking me keeping me from talking to the one that would progress the plot those two bugs were really frustrating and obviously took me completely out of the game as bad as they were though the game was generally in really good shape for the duration of my playthrough as mixed as my feelings may be I genuinely enjoyed my time with Starfield it's not often that a game this immense comes out with a such a wide range of systems and activities that it feels like its own little Universe still I've seen many of those systems executed better in other games does that make me feel like I wasted my time no because there is no other game that offers this exact formula when everything comes together the narrative the role playing level design combat Starfield becomes more than the sum of its parts and I had a really good time playing it I may not have connected with it emotionally but I enjoyed the time I spent in its Universe for those of you who made it to the end thank you thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video consider leaving a like I'm working on my Liza P review so if you want to stay updated subscribe and ring the bell till next [Music] time

Channel: Abshyp

Views: 1,208

Keywords: video games, starfield, rpg, open world, game reviews, bethesda

Id: Z3AMEQ1nq2M

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023